


Project Perseus

by 0shadow_panther0



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Affectionate Insults, Awkward Romance, Developing Friendships, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Grief/Mourning, Healthy Relationships, LGBTQ Themes, Multi, Openly Affectionate Characters, Polyamory, despite the summary i genuinely love sam, kinda vignette style
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-26
Updated: 2017-10-26
Packaged: 2019-01-23 09:37:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12504444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/0shadow_panther0/pseuds/0shadow_panther0
Summary: Sara Ryder signed up for an adventure.She gets one, but unfortunately it comes with a dead parent, a comatose brother, and a really, really annoying AI in her head.Fortunately, it also comes with some really hot aliens.





	Project Perseus

“The name’s Vetra. Vetra Nyx.”

“Sara Ryder. Pathfinder,” the human greets, extending her hand. “Perhaps you’ve heard of me,” she adds cheekily.

Despite their similarities to asari, Vetra still has a little trouble with human facial expressions, and it takes her a moment to recognize the tilt of her lips and the baring of her teeth as a friendly gesture.

She grasps Sara’s small and oddly soft hand with her own. “A pleasure to be working with you.”

Ryder’s grin widens and Vetra notices that the Pathfinder’s eyes are very, very pale- a blue-grey like frosted steel, or something equally poetic. The color is icy, but the warmth there is genuine.

“Wait!” someone yelps, and it takes all of Vetra’s willpower not to growl with irritation. She turns to face the newcomer- a scruffy human with a datapad in hand- and her mandibles twitch with impatience.

“Tann needs the cargo reports for the _Tempest_ ,” the human pants, seemingly winded from his run to the bay.

Vetra sizes him up. She remembers him, she thinks. And she knows _just_ what to offer.

“Ben, right?” she says, leading him by the shoulders away from the others. “You’ve got family in cryo, don’t you? How about...” She pauses for a moment, lets him process what she’s implying before she cuts to the chase. “...I bump them up the queue a bit, hmm? Let them out a few years early?”

Ben freezes, wide-eyed. “You- you could?” he asks.

Vetra smirks. Got him.

“You know I could,” she says. “Of course, you know what I’m going to ask in return, don’t you?”

Ben hesitates for one, tiny moment, and then sighs. “Tann’s gonna _kill_ me,” he mutters, even as he checks something off his datapad. “Alright. You’re free to go.”

She claps him on the back as he leaves and turns to Ryder and Harper. “And _that_ ,” she says with a flourish, “is how you get things done.”

The other woman- Lieutenant Cora Harper, if she remembers correctly- looks impressed and appreciative, but Ryder’s smile has faded into a small frown.

“Will you do it?” she asks suddenly.

Vetra blinks. “Excuse me?”

“You said you’d get his family out of cryo early,” Ryder presses. “Will you actually do it?” She seems unnaturally strained, her brow furrowed and bright eyes narrowed.

The turian sniffs. “Of course,” she replies. “Greasing palms tends to work less if word gets out you don’t follow through on your end.”

Ryder pauses, then relaxes, and it's only then that Vetra realizes how tense the Pathfinder had gotten. “Alright,” she says. The smile is back, Vetra notices. “Welcome aboard, Vetra.”

* * *

 

Eos is a _shitstorm_ , Ryder thinks. Between the radiation that’s roasting their asses, the fact that there’s nothing but desert and sand for miles, the thinly veiled animosity between Vetra and Liam, and how their resident crisis responder almost throws up every time they so much as look at the Nomad, she’s pretty damn tired of this hell planet. (To be fair to the poor guy, she supposes that her driving may not be the best. But that cliff was just asking to be driven off of.)

And then there’s the kett. Holy _shit_ is there a lot of kett.

Ryder ducks behind some cover while a whole squad of them open fire from the safety their makeshift blast shields, orange energy rippling as she peppers bullets into them.

“Cover me!” she shouts through comms, and she waits until she sees Vetra’s head pop out from behind cover before she lets her biotics flare up. She steps back a bit and running takes leap over the gaping chasm, charging at the first visible kett. Her biotics launch her across the gap and slams into the unfortunate Chosen, knocking it off balance, and finishes it off with a jab of her omniblade.

“Move up,” Ryder orders, and barely waits for confirmation before she’s off again, firing short bursts with her assault rifle as she slides between cover. There’s a sharp boom as Liam throws a grenade to flush the kett out from behind their barricades, and she can hear the telltale rattle of Vetra’s rifle.

The fighting is long and tedious. They’re outnumbered by the kett at least seven-to-one, and it takes them ages to clear out enough of them to move up ten feet, but they do it.

When the last Chosen falls dead to the ground, Ryder lets out a sigh of relief. “Holy shit,” she mutters, pausing so that the others can catch up to her. “That was… a _lot_ of kett. What the hell are they doing here?”

“Evidence shows that they are likely researching Remnant technology,” SAM says. “However, their motives cannot be discerned at this time.”

“Great,” Vetra says dryly. “Trigger happy aliens who want ancient, mysterious tech for no apparent reason. There’s no way this can go wrong.”

Ryder snorts, picking her way through the trail of corpses as they make their way towards the monolith. “Oh, goody.”

As Ryder strides into what appears to be the kett control center that corresponds to the freaky red energy shields they’ve been seeing all over the place, the last thing she expects is to have a dead wraith come crashing through the window.

Of course, that’s exactly what happens.

She takes aim immediately, Vetra and Liam following suit, and freezes when a very large figure clambers out of the newly made whole.

She raises her eyebrows. “That,” she says slowly, “is a krogan.”

“Damn straight,” the krogan says, and promptly rips the teeth right of the wraith’s mouth.

Vetra blinks. “Drack?”

The krogan finally turns his attention to their group, squinting. “Vetra? That you, kid?”

Vetra lets out a soft huff of laughter. “What’re you doing on this shithole planet, old man?” she asks, mandibles twitching into a turian smile.

“Killing kett,” Drack replies, and tilts his head towards Ryder. “Any friend of Vetra is a friend of mine. Though you humans should stay outta the way, being so squishy and all.”

“Hey!” Sara says, a little defensively. “We ‘squishy’ humans are pretty resilient.”

“Oh really?” Drack snorts, shoving the wraith teeth into a pouch on his utility belt.

Ryder sniffs with exaggerated haughtiness. “Survived this long, didn’t we?”

There’s a pause, and the krogan suddenly breaks into a roar of laughter. “I like this one,” he tells Vetra, pointing at Ryder. “This one’s got quads.”

“Damn straight,” Sara echoes, pitching her voice low and rough in a mimicry of Drack’s earlier words.

It prompts another of snort of laughter, and Vetra glances between them, mildly concerned.

“So you’re one of the krogan that left the Nexus?” Ryder asks.

Drack snorts. “Yeah. Damn assholes, all of them. They’re lucky they have Kesh to keep them from shitting their pants.”

“Daughter?” she guesses.

“Granddaughter,” the krogan corrects. “Still damn proud of her, though.

It prompts a grin from Ryder. “Any friend of Kesh is a friend of mine,” she says teasingly, and then pauses, thoughtful. “You could join us,” Ryder suggests. “Killing kett is a pretty desirable skill.”

Drack lets out a short bark of laughter. “Nah,” he snorts. “I’d rather avoid the Nexus for now. Maybe later, kid.” He shrugs, turning to leave. “Careful, squirt,” he tells Vetra. “See ya.”

Vetra huffs. “Watch yourself, old man,” she replies.

The reach the center of the monolith with little fanfare, and Ryder grimaces as she approaches the console. “SAM?”

“Scanning,” the AI replies, and there’s a buzzing in the back of her mind that she’s come to associate with SAM’s work.. “If you interact with the console, it would be possible for me to interface with it indirectly.”

“What about directly?” she asks. “It would be more effective, wouldn’t it?”

“Such a tactic is unwise, and could result in a situation similar to what your father faced on Habitat 7.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Sara sees Liam look the other way and Vetra shift uncomfortably.

Oh no, she is _not_ getting the pity party right now, no matter how sharp the loss is. She has a _job_ to do, dammit.

She forces a smile. “That, I imagine,” she says, tone light, “would be mildly unpleasant.”

Liam grimaces a little. “Wouldn’t mind scratching something like that off the itinerary,” he replies in turn.

Vetra still looks a little uncomfortable, shifting from one leg to the other, mandibles fluttering uncertainly.

Ryder sighs. She’ll talk to Vetra later, but for now she’ll just have to hope that the turian doesn’t think she’s emotionally compromised.

“Well,” she says, cracking her neck, “let’s do this. SAM?”

“Yes Ryder?”

“Try not to get me blown up, alright?”

* * *

 

Much to Ryder’s relief, they do not, in fact, get blown up at the monolith. They don’t get blown up at the second one either, and have the additional good fortune to only be assaulted by a dozen Remnant bots- as opposed to several dozen angry kett.

The third is a bit of a ways away, and she pretends not to notice how Liam pales or how a faint-but-noticeable shudder makes its way down Vetra’s body when she calls for them to ‘get in the fucking car, dammit.’

She takes the long way around and runs over a few extra boulders. Just because.

“I don’t know why,” Vetra says, sounding a bit strained, “you feel the need to drive over every near-vertical surface we see.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Ryder shouts over the sound of wheels, grinning madly. “It’s like this- say I give you an assault rifle that can shoot _rockets_. And then I tell you that you can only fire _bullets_ out of this rocket-shooting assault rifle.”

“I can guarantee you,” Vetra grimaces, gripping her seat as they drive up one of said near-vertical surfaces, “that it’s _absolutely_ not like that. At all.”

Liam nods solemnly, unnaturally pale and breaking out in cold sweat, and whimpers as the Nomad lurches over the edge and onto flat ground, slumping into his seat with a wheeze of relief.

“Don’t get too comfortable back there,” Ryder says cheerily. “Third monolith, coming up!”

Twin groans echo behind her, and if suffering through her driving is the only way to get the two to play nice Ryder will strap them to the Nomad herself.

The car comes to a screeching stop in front of the massive standing stone, and she let’s out a whoop as she practically leaps out the car, firing at the Remnant bots that had been aggravated by their approach.

She can hear Liam swear as he clambers out of the Nomad behind her, and then Vetra says something so crude that her translator refuses to make it out, and another pair of rattling gunfire joins the sound of her own. Ryder weaves between cover, dodging lasers and slamming anything that comes too close with her biotics.

Vetra slides behind a pillar next to her, close enough that touch, and fires blindly from around the corner. The sharp clang of bullets against metal and the subsequent explosion prove that she hits her mark.

“Come here often?” Sara asks brightly, leaning out to fire a burst at an group of bots before turning back to shoot the turian a wink.

Vetra snorts, pressing against Ryder’s back to avoid an Observer’s laser, and Liam shouts, “Please save the flirting for when we’re not getting shot at.”

Sara laughs, clear and bright, and Vetra stifles a snicker of her own.

They clear out the rest of the robots with relative ease, and Ryder finally makes it to the control panel. She squints. “Hey SAM?” she says slowly. “Is that… alien sudoku?”

“It appears that you must rearrange the glyphs into a pattern similar to sudoku,” the AI says mildly, and Ryder grimaces.

“Figures,” she sighs. “A whole ‘nother galaxy and these things still come back to haunt me.”

“Don’t like puzzles?” Vetra asks, sounding amused.

“More like I had too many,” Ryder huffs, tapping at her omnitool. “Wasn’t much to do when your dad’s protecting the galaxy and you’re stuck at home with your obnoxious twin, so I did a lot stuff like this when I was little.”

Vetra studies her quietly with her sharp turian gaze, and Ryder wonders if Cora had told her about Scott as well as their father.

Vetra opens her mouth, but whatever she’s about to say is interrupted by the blip of Ryder’s omnitool.

“Got it!” she cheers.

Nothing happens.

Sara blinks. “Uh,” she says. “SAM?”

“It will take some time for the monoliths to synchronize,” SAM drones. “However, it could be possible for me to manually override the systems and speed up the process.”

“Alright, go for it I gue-”

“ _DON’T_!” someone shrieks, and Sara Ryder is promptly tackled by a hundred-ten pounds of very energetic asari.

Vetra and Liam’s assault rifles are up before she’s even hit the ground, and Sara makes the hand signal for ‘stand down,’ keeping her eyes on the asari.

“Hi,” the asari says, and Ryder responds with a soubrettish grin.

“So,” Sara says, and Liam mutters, “Oh no,” under his breath. “Come here often?”

Vetra groans.

\---

The asari- Peebee- turns out to be an archeologist by hobby and self-proclaimed curator of Remnant goods.

She also wants them to open a vault.

“A...vault?” Liam questions over comms, gritting his teeth as they drive towards the convergence of lights.

“Of treasure?” Vetra asks, half-joking, half-hopeful, gripping her armrests tight enough that the frame creaks beneath her claws.

“No clue,” Peebee replies cheerfully. “But that’s half the fun, isn’t it? Or even three-quarters of the fun!”

“Exploring the unknown is what we signed up for,” Ryder chirps from the driver’s seat.

Vetra lets out a little half-scream as Ryder makes a sharp turn that sends the Nomad skidding across the sand and tipping dangerously.

“What’s happening on your end?” Peebee questions, not sounding at all concerned.

“We’re about to _die_ ,” Liam says, strained, and Ryder laughs.

“Don’t exaggerate,” Ryder chides with good humor and receives a strangled groan in response.

With the help of several miracles, they make it to the vault in one piece, and Liam and Vetra stagger out of the car. Liam drops down to kiss the ground and Vetra leans against a pillar and dry-heaves. Sara hops out, completely unruffled, and waves to Peebee, who somehow beat them there.

“Wow,” the asari says, watching with undisguised amusement. “What happened to you guys?”

“Weak stomachs,” the Pathfinder says flippantly. “Where to next?”

As if response, a bridge raises out of the water, straight to the entrance of the vault..

“Huh,” she says. “Dramatic. I like it.”

“Why does my gut say that something is going to go very wrong?” Liam wonders aloud, and Ryder snickers.

“Alright Debby Downer,” she grins, “get your ass into the big, freaky alien torture chamber.”

“When we’re done, you owe me a drink,” he grumbles.

“Make it two,” Vetra says with a grimace.

Ryder laughs.

* * *

 

Unfortunately, Liam’s gut is incredibly right, and within the hour all four of them are sprinting out of the vault like hell is on their heels- which it is, and it’s taken the form of a giant, black cloud.

“ _RUN_!” Liam wails.

Ryder leaps over a blast shield and swears. “Okay!” she shouts. “Maybe we didn’t sign up for this. _Specifically_ this.”

“Not the time!” Vetra calls, skidding to a stop and slamming on the door. “Fuck!” she barks. “It’s not opening! Help me get it open!”

Liam grips the edge of the door and pulls, and the two of them attempt the pry the thing open. Despite it’s age, the door’s integrity is sound, and it doesn’t so much as deign to groan at their combined efforts.

“You know what?” he wheezes. “Forget the drink. If we get out of here alive, you’re buying me the whole damn bar.”

Sara lets out a short, hysterical laugh. “SAM?” she gasps desperately. “A little help?”

“May I suggest utilizing the console, Ryder?” SAM replies without a single inflection in his voice, and if the AI had a corporeal body Ryder would have kissed it.

She lunges for the console, frantically typing on her omnitool. “Reset, _reset_ , _pretty please_ -”

And in an instant, the smoke freezes.

They all watch, wide-eyed, and the deadly smog recedes back into the depths of the vault.

“Holy. _Shit_ ,” Vetra breathes.

Sara drops to her knees and sags against the wall. “What she said,” she agrees breathlessly.

Peebee glances between Ryder and where the smoke had retreated, as if expecting it to return. “Well,” she says. “That was fun.”

\---

After inviting Peebee back to the Nexus and going their separate ways, Ryder and the others head out for an outpost site that Liam had scouted out earlier.

“Minimal radiation, clean water nearby, hell, it’s everything we could hope for,” he had told them. “And if these monoliths work out like with Habitat 7, then we’ll be able to expand even further- something fit for humanity’s first home.”

Said home, at the moment, is a stretch of relatively flat, sandy ground. A shallow lake, tinted a brilliant red by the sand, is carved through the center, and the reflection of the sun is dazzling and blinding.

There is also a krogan pummeling a pack of kett with his bare hands.

“Huh,” Ryder says. “It’s a start.”

She calls down the Nexus and the three of them stay on Eos as carrier after carrier brings down supplies and portables for the would-be colonists to live in. Water purifiers get set up around the lake, and slowly but surely, the outpost forms.

Ryder watches it all with wide, fascinated eyes, a massive grin on her face as she welcomes each settler to Eos.

Liam seems just as excited, practically vibrating with enthusiasm when the mayor of the outpost is announced.

“This is happening,” he says, breathless and hopeful. “It’s happening. We did this!”

“We did,” Sara says, laughter on her lips and brightness in her eyes, and loops her arms through theirs. “Together.”

She leads them on a stroll along the shoreline, the silver-white of the buildings stark against the reds and oranges of the desert sand.

Liam’s joy is infectious, and she sees that even Vetra’s mandibles are twitching into a turian grin.

Hope. For the first time in ages for Ryder- and infinitely longer for the rest of the Nexus.

Liam nudges her. “Alec would have been proud,” he tells her quietly. “ _This_ is what it means to be a Pathfinder.”

Vetra leans into her, a slight, comforting pressure, and Sara presses back.

She sends them both a small, grateful smile and swallows thickly. Her father’s death still weighs on her heavily, and so far she’s coped by just… not thinking about it. The same with her brother. Ryder knows that she needs time to mourn and process, but she also knows that time isn’t now. Not when there are so many depending on her.

So she swallows back her tears and holds her head high and smiles, because everyone needs her to, and grieves in these quiet moments.


End file.
